We just found a handful of the Tinley Park Five t-shirts NYC ABC designed and printed as a fund raiser for those five antifa comrades. There are very few t-shirts left and we find it fitting to use them to support another comrade arrested and imprisoned as part of the Tinley Park action. So, we are offering these shirts to raise funds for Jason Hammond. Get your shirt at gum.co/JasonHammond

Supporting antifascists sends the message that white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists won’t be allowed to organize without facing opposition. By supporting Jason, you are not simply buying a t-shirt, you are placing yourself in a community of individuals committed to upending organized white supremacy. So even if there is not a shirt in your size, you can still make a donation and have the t-shirt as a reminder of Jason, the Tinley Park Five, and all the unnamed folks willing to risk their freedom to stand against fascism.Hang it on a wall, give it as a gift, cut it up and make it a patch, banner, or flag.

Jason Hammond pleaded guilty, while refusing to provide information on others, to state charges against him for participation in an organized direct action taken against a group of white supremacists in May 2012 in Tinley Park, Illinois. Jason is currently serving a sentence of nearly three and a half years in an Illinois state prison.

Comrades at Fire to the Prisons have released a new issue and it is available online. Check out the new issue, print your own copies, and view past PDFs at their new website: firetotheprisons.org (NOT to be confused with .com, which is hosted by unknown sources).

NYC ABC and East Bay Prisoner Support are helping with distribution for prisoners via snail mail. If you are a prisoner support group looking do the same, please contact Fire to the Prisons.

Fire to the Prisons is an insurrectionary periodical. It focuses on promoting a revolutionary solidarity between different struggles, prisoners, and existing social tensions that challenge capitalism and the state.

The publishers made 10,000 copies of this issue because they want to get them out as far and wide as possible. In order to create a publication with broad reach, and for free to comrades and the discontented general public, they forfeited their traditional magazine form and went with less costly newsprint. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into this project and it shows.

If you would like to order bulk copies of the newspaper, please order from Little Black Cart (LBC) at their website. LBC will send out issues for the cost of postage.

All direct inquiries– ranging from questions, feedback, and requests for copies can be sent to firetotheprisons@riseup.net

The publishers are still looking to make back the $2,000 dollars in out of pocket expenses that went into printing the latest issue. If you are able to throw them some money – or better yet, organize a benefit, please get at them!

The publishers want to thank everyone who made this project possible – and all who have supported them in the past. Everyone that spent long hours looking at PDFs, those who built the new website, the friends that will help print and distribute the paper, all those who contributed to the publication, and everyone who has given encouragement along the way. Without you, this project would not have been possible.

For a borderless affinity,
For those that truly know the meaning of silence,
For all our comrades yet to be made free from the horrors of the State,Fire to the Prisons

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing DinnerWHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.COST: FreeSo cops in Chicago now function like the thugs of the CIA by having a black site where they torture and disappear folks they arrest. Let that set in for a minute. Chicago cops, with a storied history of corruption and brutality, operate an off-the-books compound where they interrogate folks. Ask many of the prisoners we support and they’ll describe similar torture during their detentions and/or imprisonments. Speaking of supporting political prisoners, it’s time again for the every-other-week NYC ABC political prisoner letter-writing dinner. In this month of women’s history, we offer our solidarity to female rebels.

We expect to see you on Tuesday. If you can’t make it, please take the time to write letters to the prisoners:Debbie Sims Africa #OO6307SCI Cambridge Springs
451 Fullerton Avenue
Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania 16403

We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing (and download) by clicking on the tab at the top of this page. This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for several prisoners as well as adding Stanley Cohen (radical attorney serving eighteen months after being targeted by the federal government) and Jason Hammond (serving three and a half years for militant anti-racist action taken against a so-called European Economic Summit, winking code for white supremacist organizing event).

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing DinnerWHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, February 17th, 2015WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.COST: FreeCan you name one thing that’s more important than a celebrity publicly criticizing another celebrity? It’s as if cops weren’t indiscriminately murdering folks and landlords weren’t looking to kick folks out into the street to make a buck. Meanwhile the state fabricates legislation to repress dissent. But by all means, corporate media, distract us with what some musician rants about. The crew in NYC ABC sees through the bullshit and refuses to lose focus on supporting imprisoned revolutionaries.

This Tuesday’s dinner will focus on two Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoners– Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning. Both are imprisoned for actions carried out by United Freedom Front (UFF), a clandestine revolutionary organization active in the United States in the early 1980s. The group targeted government institutions and major corporations that had ties to the South African Apartheid system or right-wing paramilitaries in Central America. This included taking actions directly against the South African and United States governments. The UFF carried out targeted bombings of corporate buildings, courthouses and military facilities as well as bank robberies to fund revolutionary projects. Both men were deeply involved in anti-South African apartheid organizing.

We expect to see you on Tuesday. If you can’t make it, please take the time to write letters to Jaan and Tom:Jaan Karl Laaman #10372-016 USP Tuscon Post Office Box 24550 Tuscon, Arizona 85734

NOTE: The process Brandon is pursuing, the 2255, is the same one that Eric McDavid recently won.
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Greetings,

Please consider echoing my appeal for solidarity.

I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their solidarity to this point. I’ve lived far more comfortably and with greater support than most others in prison. To be blunt, your constant insistence that I never feel forgotten has literally saved my life. I know that if early on I had not had that reassurance I would have committed suicide. So, thank you all for carrying me, kicking and screaming, throughout this.

Today I come to you with a dire need. When I plead guilty to the charges made against me I did so out of fear and ignorance. Since then I’ve grown wiser and educated myself in the law. My appeals are exhausted, and thus I am in the process of filing a 2255 writ of post conviction relief on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, which I know as a matter of fact I will win. This will remand my case back to court for trial, and I intend to fight.

I will not fight though with a puppet of the state representing me against the state. I’ve learned my lesson in trusting public defenders and court appointed attorneys. This time around I will need a hired lawyer.

This request is for two specific forms of solidarity: The time and commitment of a trustworthy lawyer bent on social justice, and for funds for a defense. I have no set figure at the moment, but imagine it to be significant. More details can be found through my support committee once figures are developed.

What we will be fighting for is pivotal. The immediate goals is physical freedom from prison – which otherwise would last another 5-6 years – and a life time of federal supervised release (probation). The long term goal is to set legal precedence which can be utilized by others in prison under similar circumstances, currently and to come, to obtain their freedom, as well as to prevent similar episodes in the future. This goal will be much more difficult to achieve, but is far from impossible. The final goal will be financial retribution for the costs of the defense itself, and for the time I’ve currently spent incarcerated, along with the psychological toll that incarceration has taken upon me. If obtained, these funds will be dedicated to reimburse all of those who have supported the Cleveland 4 to this point, and to future prisoner support endeavors.

WHAT: Benefit for AETA defendants Kevin Olliff and Tyler LangWHEN: 8pm sharp, Friday, February 13th, 2015WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.COST: Entrance is free but we will be requesting donations for Kevin and Tyler’s legal defense fund.

Tyler Lang and Kevin Olliff are two animal rights activists who, in 2014, were arrested in Illinois for “possession of burglary tools.” After a traffic stop, cops allegedly found bolt cutters, muriatic acid, ski masks, and camouflage clothing in the car. Tyler pleaded to 3 months time served while Kevin received a 30 month sentence in state prison. In July 2014, both were indicted under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) and are accused of liberating animals from fur farms in 3 different states. They face up to 10 years in prison.

We will be screening If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, a film that focuses on our friend and New Yorker, Daniel McGowan. He was arrested in 2005 by federal agents in a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front– a group the FBI has called America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.” The ELF operates in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership and launched spectacular actions against dozens of environmentally destructive businesses: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge in Vail, Colorado.